November 4, 2016
What Higher Education
Can Do to Unleash Innovation
WSJ Leadership Expert C. L. Max Nikias says that higher education needs more dual
appointments to foster the kind of collaborative research needed to keep up with
technological advances. Photo: ISTOCK Photo
By C. L. Max Nikias
From my perspective as an electrical
engineer and president of one of our
country’s leading research universities, I have
observed firsthand how quickly technology
is moving today. We stand on the precipice
of what the World Economic Forum calls
the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in which
technology will develop exponentially,
blurring the lines between the physical,
digital, and biological spheres.
There’s no doubt that America’s
research universities will be the engines
that drive this revolution, particularly in
what is increasingly being referred to as
the converged biosciences – medicine,
engineering and the life sciences. After
all, with technology as an enabler, it is at
the intersection of these disciplines that
the greatest advances of this generation
will come – all related to improving lives
and extending lifespans.
Most institutions boast cross-discipline
research programs. But few have aligned
their organizations in a manner that
supports the necessary paradigm shift
from “working alongside” one’s crossdiscipline colleagues to “working together”
with them. Too often, academics work in
their respective silos, and may never even
discuss their research with faculty in other
departments or schools until it has been
completed and peer reviewed. By that
time, key opportunities for collaboration
have already been lost.
But the challenges go deeper. Consider
this: Engineers are preoccupied with the
material and systems world; scientists
are preoccupied with the theoretical
experimental world; and medical doctors are
preoccupied with the human world, focused
primarily on their patients’ outcomes.
These disparate approaches represent
not only a clash of methodologies, but also
a clash of cultures. So how do we get our
academic superstars to work together and
harness the technology that will enable
the advances the world most needs?
As with most kinds of entities, the
answer comes down to two things:
human-resource alignment coupled with
an incentive structure that matches the
organization’s objectives.
At my university, we have focused on
the recruitment of transformative faculty
who have been given joint appointments
across two or more disciplines or schools.
Many hold appointments with both our
medical and engineering schools. Others
add biology or chemistry to their portfolios.
This approach has reaped significant benefits
not just for us, but also for some of our
peer institutions like MIT and Stanford,
who have likewise become early adopters.
And as this trend becomes more
commonplace in our country’s leading
institutions, I am confident that we
will see an increase in the pace of new
innovations. But to succeed, these multiple
appointments should not be offered as
a courtesy – they cannot be secondary
appointments. Each appointment should be
of equal weight, with specific expectations
for multidiscipline execution.
Our blueprint for those who earn more
than one appointment includes oversight
of projects, centers or academies that bring
together faculty members from the various
disciplines they represent. This means
that faculty from a number of different
disciplines work with each other, often
in the same location, under the guidance
of leadership that has a multidiscipline
mandate. Rather than cross-collaboration
opportunities opening at the end of a
research cycle, the chance to ignite a new
spark of cooperation can now present
itself on a daily basis.
The performance reviews of those who
have earned joint faculty appointments
include metrics around how fluidly they
and their teams are able to work across
the academic units to which they belong.
A number of innovations have come
as a direct result of this organizational
strategy. Mark Humayun, a doctor and
biomedical engineer who holds joint
appointments with our engineering
and medical schools, led a collaborative
effort between engineers, doctors and
biologists that in 2013, culminated in
an FDA-approved artificial retina that
restores sight to patients suffering from
retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye
disease that affects roughly one in every
4,000 Americans.
More recently, Peter Kuhn, who holds
joint faculty appointments in biological
sciences and medicine, is leading a project
that brings together doctors, engineers,
scientists, designers and entrepreneurs
to create a wearable technology that
provide doctors with real-time patient
cancer data. Dr. Kuhn and his team have
also pioneered what has been called the
liquid biopsy, a new nonintrusive cancer
screening tool that will revolutionize testing
and treatment. These efforts are part of
the White House’s recently announced
cancer moonshot initiative, which stresses
the need for researchers from multiple
disciplines to work together.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
promises to fundamentally reshape
our world and our way of life through
technology. But it will be the human factor,
ultimately, that enables us to harness these
coming technologies and deploy them for
the common good. Promoting joint faculty
appointments at our nation’s research
universities is an important step toward
making this future a reality.
C. L. Max Nikias
(@uscpres on Instagram)
is president of the University
of Southern California. He
holds faculty appointments
in both electrical engineering
and the classics. He is a
member of the National
Academy of Engineering,
a fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences
and a charter fellow of
the National Academy of
Inventors.